Girls, no matter what your husband, partner, boyfriend tells you, size does matter.
Of course, I’m talking about houses – what were you thinking I meant?
Last week we moved back to our Chatswood base from a short house-sit in St Ives.
Our Chatswood house (not actually OURS, but we’ve been doing a house-sit in it since November 2014, for which we are very grateful) is a SMALL two bedroom semi.
While it’s very convenient to shops, public transport, schools (not relevant for us, but I’ve lapsed into Real Estate agent mode) it is SMALL.
The kitchen doesn’t really accommodate two people at once. (I’ve tried to use that as an excuse to get out of cooking, washing up and other kitchen related activities but it’s been an abject failure.)
So, when Danita and I are both in the kitchen we do what has come to be known as the “kitchen tango”.
That means we have to co-ordinate opening cupboards, loading the dishwasher and using the fridge.
The passageway is only wide enough for one person at a time AND there’s only one bathroom.
Having lived here for over a year we’d become accustomed to these arrangements and they’d stopped being an issue UNTIL…
We just did a house-sit in a normal sized house. (That’s normal for St Ives.)
It wasn’t a huge house but it had three bedrooms, a couple of office areas, a swimming pool, a good sized kitchen, and most important of all, two bathrooms (talk about luxury!).
In fact, the Chatswood house would probably fit into half the St Ives house (that’s why it’s called a “semi” – it’s actually half a house in size).
After having three weeks in a “proper” house we’ve suddenly become very aware of how small the current one is.
So our mission on the first weekend back was to get as much of our “stuff” back to our storage facility and do some tidying up.
When you don’t have a lot of room it’s amazing how leaving something lying on a chair can have an impact.
So, we’ve been getting back into our groove around being compact and eliminating as much clutter as possible.
Obviously, when you’re living in someone else’s house (in the midst of their clutter) there are limited options for de-cluttering but we’re getting better (again) at stacking shelves very efficiently so we make the best use of available space while still having access to what we need.
It’s a bit like living on a sailing boat – narrow, cramped and, if done with the right attitude, fun.
There’s now a program on Foxtel called “Tiny Houses”.
The episode we saw had the couple looking at a range of options from an adapted truck to a portable house.
Eventually, they decided to renovate the bus they owned and turned it into a beautiful mobile home.
From our perspective that was a sensible move.
You know how you watch TV and give instructions to the people in the program. I understand this is very common when watching a sports match on TV.
That’s how it was for us – sitting there telling them to use the bus – and we were so relieved when they decided to do it. It’s weird how you live vicariously through so-called “reality TV”.
Anyway, the house they were looking at seemed quite large from our perspective – I guess everything is about perspective.
If you’ve got a few moments for a bit of fun, do a Google search for “tiny houses”.
You’ll find blogs, facebook pages, businesses and lots more.
Apparently, they are becoming very popular with people who are downsizing.
If you’d like a “try before you buy” come and visit us.